Brewster Fin-Com tees off on Captains Course

The finance committee teed off on Captains Golf Course at their meeting March 19 and they didn’t find the green.

Rich Eldred

The finance committee teed off on Captains Golf Course at their meeting March 19 and they didn’t find the green.

The course is now forecasting a $269,000 deficit for Fiscal Year 2014. The course was profitable as recently as FY2010 when it returned $84,407 to the town, but since the recession, it has slipped into the red, primarily due to they overhang from bonds that financed the course expansion from 18 to 36 holes in 1999.

This year the course will lose about $180,000 (the forecast a year ago was for a loss of $88,000).

“The operating budget (roughly $900,000) represents just 50 percent of the expenses of the golf course,” noted FinCom member James O’Leary.

He targeted the maintenance staff, noting Brewster had nine while according the report by the Golf Consulting Group five or six should be adequate.

“Our overall labor cost, on the surface, seems very high, $750,000 in 2014,” O’Leary said. “It’s the most expensive by a wide margin when you compare by acreage. Maintenance costs are up 14-percent in three years.”

Then he took aim at the golfers.

“Season pass holders account for 48 percent of the rounds played but only 28 percent of the revenue,” O’Leary noted. “There is no cap on the number of rounds. Write a check once and you can play 365 rounds.”

Based on the greens fees a pass holder pays for 11 and a half rounds and plays 25 for free.

“This is not an essential service. We are paying for your recreation,” O’Leary declared. “I don’t know how much red ink we have to get before we get a new direction.”

He noted that including next year the course will have lost $800,000 over four years. The cost of the course expansion bond climbs to $770,000 in 2020 when it will be finally paid off. Deficits are forecast through then, totaling $1.5 million dollars, not including FY2014.

“We should be looking at a shared solution here,” O’Leary said. “I don’t understand why the last four years it’s been up to the Brewster taxpayer to make up the deficit.”

He suggested the course do with one less maintenance person (saving about $60,000 a year) and golfers pay for one more round (i.e., bump their fees).

He asked the selectmen to require the players and course to cover half the annual deficit.

Selectman Dan Rabold noted that unlike other departments the golf course is expected to pay its own expenses each year.

“It’s an asset, something to make Brewster a good place to come to live,” Rabold said. “If you took out the cost of the 18 holes the golf course is going to make half a million this year.”

“The golf community are also taxpayers,” Selectman Ed Lewis noted, who added that since the recession people moving to town haven’t replaced golfers who passed away or stopped playing. “If you start to mess with the maintenance you start to mess with the golf course. We have one superintendent taking care of two courses. To raise prices again, after last year (an increase) would be detrimental.”

“We did create a lot more guest tee times in prime time and they did not get filled to the extent we projected,” said Director of Golf Mark O’Brien. “The resident rate is pushing up against other towns’ non-resident rates. You can join Dennis for $1,100.”

O’Leary was the most vocal critic, but he wasn’t the only one.

“The time comes when you need to pay as you play and that time has come,” declared Dennis Hanson. “It’s unfair to taxpayers and younger families.”

“I would just hope that when we do get the note paid off we get paid back for some of the subsidies,” Herb Montgomery said.

“I don’t think anyone here wants to penalize golf,” chairman Mike Fitzgerald concluded. “But when the golf course was sold to the taxpayers then – it was never going to cost the taxpayers’ money. The golf course needs a three- to five-year business plan.”